The Automation Platform Team (APT) has created a robust, scalable automation infrastructure that integrates legacy systems with modern tooling such as NICE, Hyperscience, Terraform, and Ansible. The APT currently manages more than 80 robotic process automation (RPA) solutions across 1,500 VMs, processing over 18 million cases annually.
As specialists in digital transformation, APT typically focus on exploring and testing processes that take agents a long time to perform manually, or ones where the customer journey needs to be improved. Now we’re taking this one step further, developing the use of robotic process automation in tax processes.
Siloed data sources
Data on individuals and companies are stored in more than 20 internal and external systems used by HMRC – for example, the Employer Business System, Case Manager, and Reference Tool. With these systems there can be a delay in updates and synchronisation. As a result, outdated and potentially incorrect data is collected from singular systems, making it difficult to identify taxpayers and companies effectively or build a profile against them. For HMRC, this results in large amounts of unrecovered taxes.
Smarter tax profiling
In response, we’ve been working hand-in-hand to simplify the complex task of pulling together all the relevant data from different systems pertaining to a taxpayer or company.
Our Digitisation of Data Gathering (DoDG) project uses robotic process automation to validate information in support of a number of processes. Our robots are able to collate and validate information contained in spreadsheets, the Unique Taxpayer Reference List, and the Taxpayer Business System among others, supporting agents in handling cases more effectively by reducing the time spent retrieving and corroborating information.
Developers in the automation team are trained in the AI customer service automation platform NICE and are experts at bridge-building between systems that pre-date automation technology. This is a strategic shift from patchwork fixes to a unified, modular architecture. We’ve been able to build multiple automations that use similar processes – including accessing the right systems, retrieving information, matching it to other sources and validating it – to support case agents by providing more complete and accurate tax profiles of individuals or companies to support caseworkers helping reduce errors and improve consistency and fairness.
Unlocking efficiencies
Already, HMRC has experienced a massive improvement in team efficiency, with automation saving approximately 2.5 hours per individual case, up to 4 hours on employer compliance cases, and as many as 6.5 hours on corporate tax cases. This drives productivity savings of 105 FTE annually, freeing up HMRC employees to focus on higher-value work with those customers who need more support. By engaging staff and being transparent, we have overcome any resistance, so savings are set to grow with further increases in bulk (One to Many) cases. There have also been operational improvements and increase in Tax recovery rates from compliance activity.
The ATP is also enabling strategic change and supporting wider government aims with solutions being used across HMRC and other departments.
Significantly, HMRC’s processes and people aren’t the only ones benefitting from DoDG – so too are citizens. Consistently delivering critical time savings across different types of processes has also dramatically improved the customer journey. Now, systems help flag cases where agents may need to consider unique circumstances arise or when a citizen needs more specialised help or support, improving their experience and satisfaction. And with citizen experience a number one priority, it’s no surprise plans are in place to increase DoDG automation, enabling us to process even more cases, from around 700,000 in 2025 to over one million by 2026.
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